Morgan Chen

feb kind of got away from me. not even in a dramatic way, just... i had a version of this month in my head and it wasn't this. still, got through it. deck's closed, calendar finally has some air in it, jamie texted asking if i'm alive lol. march looks more normal. or at least more like me again.

Elena put time on the calendar for mid-March. 30 min, Blue Bottle on Sansome. not reading too much into it, just keeping that one alive. she thinks carefully and I want her in the mix if this comes back around later.

ok so next 90 is pretty clear now. less time doing investor coffee and fake maybe meetings. more product, more time with devon, more time in the room with eng. i want the calendar to stay this light on purpose -- not as a weird gap, just bc the prior four months were too much drift. leaning one customer block a week max unless it's truly live deal pressure. otherwise shipping, onboarding fixes, a tighter weekly cadence with the team. idk, feels obvious now that i'm writing it. jamie dinner tomorrow too. nice.

Monday. calendar's weirdly light. standup, then gonna spend a real block on Q3 planning while my brain still works. trying not to let random stuff flood the empty space bc this is basically the first clean Monday in months. dinner with Jamie later if UCSF doesn't blow up her shift.

Book the place Jamie likes for tonight. Nothing fancy. Somewhere we can actually hear each other.

Ping Devon re the retention doc. Need one owner on it -- get me a name.

dinner was good. first real one we've had in a bit where nobody was half on call / half fried. tiny place, loud outside but fine inside, could actually hear each other. i think we're ok. Jamie seems lighter.

back on the Embarcadero this morning. grey bay, ferry building barely there for a minute, then sun trying a little. legs were not thrilled at first but ok. weird how fast one normal thing can make the rest of the day feel less scrambled

product review at 10. first real block i've had for it in weeks and i need it. calendar's weirdly light today so i'm gonna stay on product as long as i can after, not get pulled back into random finance stuff unless something's actually on fire.

Ping Devon: need a real conversation about the prior month tomorrow. Block two hours, no interrupting.

slept like a rock for once and honestly... can tell. head feels way less scrambled. home in time for dinner, Jamie's making pasta, Kibo already parked in the kitchen like he's on sous chef duty

cold enough on the bridge that my hands are basically useless lol. sky's really clear though. bay looks fake-blue for once. meeting devon in like 8

devon later. i want that convo on rails fast -- H2 plan, what we cut, what we stop pretending is still live. not gonna spend another week trying to force a round that isn't there. leaning H2 unless something really non-obvious shows up this morning. then product review and i'm keeping investor stuff basically boxed out.

just closed this w Devon. Mar 8 line in the sand: B-round goes to H2. not gonna spend spring doing half-fundraise / half-product and pretending that's coherent. we need the Q3 launch to hit hard enough on retention that nobody has to squint at the charts. Jake's leading the eng side of that push. unnamed for now, which is probably good bc if we name it today we'll pick something dumb lol. also means calendar changes -- less investor stuff, more time w product/data this month.

made the call. feels right. good day, actually. office had some life to it again. jamie's home, kibo got his walk, i'm gonna be in bed stupid early

standup was quick. everybody was already talking in the tighter lane, less random side quests, which was nice. didn't have to do the whole speech about it. devon picked up the same thing after.

thinking we should tag Jake on the Q3 push lead. not in a ceremonial way -- actually give him the thing and see what he does with it. he'll either grow fast or make it obvious he doesn't want that kind of seat. my read is he grows into it. Devon's basically there too. feels cleaner than me hovering over every retention-data thread again.

weirdly grey out. not cold enough for a real coat, not nice enough to pretend it's spring either. office windows just look like someone turned saturation down

jake brought up Discord again, but like... barely. i did my usual 'maybe later' and even that came out less fighty than before. still not seeing us in there, just didn't have the energy to make it a whole thing over coffee

Olivia gave notice today. 14 months here and now she's headed to a Series-B fintech in NY. bittersweet, mostly. she's got a two-week wind-down so not an immediate hole, but yeah. sat with that for a minute and then went back to cleaning up PM stuff on my side.

Friday. customer check-in late morning, Priya review after lunch. wanna be out by 5 for once so i'm keeping the middle of the day clean -- no random "quick sync" stuff if i can help it.

Devon said accounting's helping pull the retention cuts and Anna Martinez is doing a lot of the legwork there. I still haven't seen an actual draft. if she gets something into shape before next week, great. otherwise I'm gonna go ask for the raw export and work from that.

espresso machine pulled a basically drinkable shot today. whole kitchen got weirdly quiet about it lol. nobody wants to say it's fixed and scare it back into producing burnt puddle water

Devon got the first signup-month retention cut in today. stared at it longer than i want to admit. not pretty, which... yeah. but it's not a horror show either. shape looks maybe workable if the newer cohorts keep behaving and we stop leaking so hard after the first couple weeks. i don't totally trust the bins yet -- want to check event mapping and whether a few self-serve teams got counted weird on reactivation. still, this is the first time i've looked at it and not felt insane. useful chart finally.

week one done. better than two fridays ago by a lot, which is enough. left the office before dark for once. jamie's home, actual dinner, kibo doing laps because he thinks every pan sound is for him.

clear enough out there that the bridge looked fake for a sec. did the long one with Jamie, just cold hands and that weird too-bright bay water. Kibo is now fully passed out on the rug lol

espresso machine drifted again. pulled totally blonde, crema looked like soap foam. whatever they did wore off. back to the drip across the street lol

jamie's on the couch reading, kibo fully wedged against her legs like he pays rent. i'm half sketching q3 stuff, half not. weirdly nice combo rn. not trying to squeeze a whole life into the margins today

week ahead looks pretty sane, finally. couple real work blocks on the calendar instead of 14 little drive-bys. home now, Jamie's back on normal-human hours and we're figuring out dinner while Kibo does the kitchen patrol thing

Week's basically Q3 scoping if I can protect the time. product review with Devon, then a couple hours on the model and headcount math. Maya booked her flight for March 21, 2023 btw so need to not let that week get stupid. and Sunday is me/Jamie anniversary, which I'm not punting this year.

Anna Martinez started today. retention-data lead, sits under Devon. got her set up and into the docs this morning; first full week is just ramp, but feels good to have her in on this now.

ok so Q3 2023 shape is finally pretty clear in my head. three workstreams, each small enough to actually finish: retention instrumentation/cleanup, the account expansion path, and the admin pain stuff that keeps showing up in calls. leaning Jake as lead across it -- not as a title thing, actually have him run the weekly and keep cuts moving. the only thing I really need to see before we lock it is the retention data in one place. if Anna Martinez + accounting get the cuts cleaned up, that's the proof point. otherwise we're still arguing from vibes

Find something actually good for Sunday dinner in the Mission for me + Jamie. No chains. Around 7:30, ideally not too loud.

monday done. not bad. jamie's back late from UCSF so i'm handling dinner... probably dumplings or thai. kibo's doing laps bc he thinks every takeout bag is for him

tuesday. two customer calls this morning, gym at noon if nothing catches fire. want the gaps in between actually usable so i'm not doing the usual context-switch soup. devon after lunch probably.

Tuesday's pretty normal. Two quick customer calls this morning, both fine, nothing weird. Gym at lunch if I can get out the door on time.

Stop CC'ing Rishi on customer email threads. He doesn't want the firehose. Only loop him in if Atlas comes up -- that's the API, auth, and connectors side of Scaffold that he owns. Otherwise keep him off.

home. pretty quiet finally. jamie's making noodles, kibo's doing laps between the stove and the table like he's employed. gonna eat and be useless for maybe 45 min then probably just crash early

keep replaying the Acme Logistics thing from last Q4. that $12k bill was basically about to clear and i don't think anyone would've caught it if Devon hadn't done his weird habit pass on the batch. literally the morning the wire was scheduled. loud wake-up call, yeah. still makes my stomach drop a little.

Wednesday. mostly product stuff, which is nice. 1:1s this morning, customer call after lunch, then leaving a little air for the late deploy -- release schedule says end of day so i don't want the calendar packed when it goes out.